How to Use External Referrals like Citrix to Expand Your Talent Network

Studies show that employers rank employee referrals as their number one source for new hires. These companies recognize the many benefits, including improved quality-of-hire, faster time-to-hire, higher workplace morale, and lower retention rates, that employee referral programs have to offer.

Both large and small companies work hard to maintain, and even expand, their employee referral program to drive successful hiring results. Here’s a look at how Citrix, a major software company, took their already successful employee referral program and made it even better.

Expand Their Current Referral Reach

While Citrix’s current referral program is already successful at generating high-quality referrals, it is limited to only full-time employees. Citrix recruiting leaders realized that by limiting their referral program, they were limiting the reach of the program only to include those within their full-time employees’ network.

To expand this reach, Citrix wanted to extend their current referral program to include part-time employees and non-exempt employees, as well as contractors. The company also wanted to go one step further and include relevant non-employees, including customers, prospective candidates, and even friends of employees.

The goal was to increase the number of high-quality referrals by expanding the program’s reach. In order to meet their goals, they partnered with EmployUs. When asked about EmployUs, Diane Johnson, Director of Talent Acquisition shared, “We believe it’s a game-changing technology that is easy to use and that will reach a larger network of candidates than typically we can reach on our own."

New Referral Program

Citrix took several steps to improve their current employee referral program.

Improved Referral Platform: Citrix updated their current referral platform and introduced a mobile app to make it easier for both employees and non-employees to make referrals.

Bonuses Available to Everyone: Part of expanding their referral program also meant expanding referral bonus eligibility. When Citrix posted jobs vacancies, they also posted referral bonuses amounts and made them available to everyone.

Employee Promotion: Citrix took time out of mandatory employee meetings to promote the improved employee referral program in-house.

Non-Employee Promotion: The company also promoted the new program to contractors and encourage them to download and use the new Citrix mobile app.

Outsourced Reward Management: Citrix knew that fulfilling reward requests for both employees and non-employees would be overwhelming for their in-house team. To alleviate some of these duties, Citrix outsourced their rewards management, including processing payments, handling taxes, and determining eligibility, to EmployUs.

If you want to obtain higher quality candidates, speed up the hiring process, and improve overall hiring outcomes, now is the time to expand your employee referral program to include external referrals.

Modernizing your current employee program by expanding your current employee referral program to include part-time employees, seasonal employees, contractors, former employees, and their extended network is the first step.

For help modernizing your employee referral program, check out these six Pre-Built Employee Referral Program Templates.